Thursday, April 18, 2013

April 21, Easter 4, "No One Will Snatch Them"

The Good Shepherd Window at Old First, by Otto Heinigke, photo by Jane Barber.Acts 9:36-43, Psalm 23, Revelation 7:9-17, John 10:22-30
The gospel lesson takes place in the Temple during the Festival of the Dedication, which is what we call Hanukkah. Hanukkah commemorates the military victory of the Maccabees 150 years before Christ. The Maccabees led the war of liberation from the empire of the Greeks, and then they set up an independent Jewish state, which lasted for a couple generations, until the Romans came and conquered them and that was that. But they remembered their independence with this holiday, their Independence Day, their Fourth of July, but sacred, and hoping for independence again, with the coming of the Messiah, when it would be permanent, and even eternal, and maybe many thousands of Jews who had died as martyrs would be resurrected back to life. So of course the people want to know if Jesus claims to be the Messiah. They have to analyze the risks involved in following him or not, and calculate the costs either way. You know, sell off their stocks, buy gold, divorce that Gentile wife. And as it had cost many Jewish casualties for the Maccabees to win, if this Jesus is the Messiah, then everybody’s in for it, so it’s only fair that he declare himself, and they can make their preparations. Jesus answers with Shepherd language, which was political language, royal language, going back to King David, the shepherd boy who became the Shepherd of his people, and therefore sounding like, yes, on this Independence Day, in the Temple, yes, he is the Messiah. So you can understand, that after his resurrection, the great majority of Jews did not believe in him. Not only was there the reasonable doubt that a dead man should be alive again, and if he was, he should have shown himself to the chief priests at least, and shown some respect. But there was the further problem that say, okay, he did rise from the dead, what did he do with it? What difference did he make? Where was the power of his resurrection? Where was his Kingdom? Okay, maybe in the months that followed, after Pentecost, in Jerusalem, these five thousand believers were having a wonderful life together with their long-term love-in, but what about the political reality of Jerusalem and the economic burdens of the Judean poor and the Galilean sharecroppers? If he rose from the dead, why isn’t he here where we need him? The majority figured that even if his resurrection were true, it was irrelevant. So why believe in him?

Then things got worse. The long-term love-in of the believers suddenly ended with the stoning of Stephen and the persecution started and most of them got kicked out of Jerusalem, like Peter, who in our first lesson is living in exile for a while, over in Lydda. And yet the believers keep believing. They must have had a powerful experience of a new kind of life. Even in exile and persecution they felt a part of something new and different in the world, which gave them joy and did not disappoint their hope. I expect that Dorcas was one of those who expressed the hope and contributed to the joy. You can tell by her two names, Hebrew and Greek, that she crossed the ethnic and religious boundaries in her relationships. She made her living as a seamstress, and she made extra clothes for the widows, who by definition tended toward poverty. Most people then had only one set of clothes to wear, and the poor did not have cash. She dressed them in clothing they delighted in. They valued Dorcas so much that when she died they asked the Apostle Peter to come and do the service. That’s why they called for him, not that they were expecting him to raise her again, but that her death should have the honor she deserved. They show off to him the clothes that made them proud. When Peter sees what she did, he senses a defining moment, he makes an apostolic decision, he takes a leap of faith, and asks God to resurrect her.

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Daniel James Meeter grew up in Manhattan, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Jersey, and Long Island. He was ordained to the Reformed Church ministry in 1980, and has served churches in Jersey, Michigan, and Ontario. He earned a Ph.D. from Drew University in 1989, and has published two technical books in theology as well as many articles. He is married to Rev. Melody Takken Meeter, the Director of Pastoral Care at the Lutheran Medical Center of Brooklyn. They have two married children.
The Old First Mission Statement:
Old First Reformed Church is a community of Jesus Christ in Brooklyn. We welcome persons of every ethnicity, race, and orientation to worship, serve, and love God, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. We embrace the following missions:
1. To offer God's word, prayer, the sacraments, and discipleship; 2. To offer outreach, education, fellowship, and music;
3. To offer sanctuary to anyone seeking spirituality and hope;
4. To offer hospitality to community groups and the arts; 5. To care for the gifts we have been given through our Reformed Church, including our historic sanctuary and building.